The Theme Of Death In The Poisonwood Bible By Barbara Kingsolver

Life has been celebrated and death has been mourned since the begining of time. The certainty of life and death can be seen as tragic or necessary. There is no way to get used to either of these things occurring because the loss of every person important to us causes pain and allows us to reevaluate what our life looks like without them. In the novel, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, the author portrays the emotional aftermath of death on those still living by introducing differing viewpionts to show the massive impact culture and age has on the acceptance of the inevitable. It is always tragic when a child outlives their parents, or even when an adult loses someone close to them. The shock of this loss can spread through the

They live with the constant fear that most of the children they have will die from nature, lack of food, or disease and no one will be there to care for them in their old age. However, this does not mean that they do not love their children, they have just come to terms with the harsh reality of their lives. They grieve openly and violently for all the village children, “All the mothers come walking on their knees. They shriek and wail a long, high song with quivering soft palates, like babies dying of hunger. Their tears run down and they stretch their hands out toward the dead child but never do they reach it,”(170). They even did this when Ruth May died, showing the value they place in all children. The way they view death also affects the way they live their lives. When they are done mourning, they move on with their lives and keep going, “Their initial reluctance gave way to excited chatter as they began to sort through the piles of our possessions, unabashedly holding our clothes up to their children’s chests”(372). They have to think about the future. Their excitement at the things Orleana was giving them might have seemed inappropriate to the Price girls, but they failed to take into consideration that it was their mother giving their things away. Having multiple children also gives them a backup plan if the child meant to inherit from them or take care of them dies. “Tata Boanda lost

She knew that she could realistically lose her daughters in the Congo, “I couldn’t stop imagining the deaths of my children”(95). She shared this fear with the other adults of the village. Her method of moving on “I continued to watch without any particular expectation as she emerged, next, with our clothes and books,”(371) might have been learned after she came to the congo. Orleana throwing all their possessions out of the house is like the Congolese women coming together to scream over the lost child. If she had still been in the United States, she most likely wouldnt have caused a scene like this and gone through the traditional path of going to a funeral and greiving privately. She experienced a less innocent view of the world than the children in her life. She knew, unlike them, that even if they did make it safely out of the Congo, everything they experienced and saw would stay with them and they couldnt pretend it didn't happen. Orleanna’s view on life changed because she became aware of how much work it took to feed her children and keep them alive in the Congo, “We all ate fried chicken that Mother had cooked, southern style, starting from scratch with killing them and lopping off their heads”(48).The restrictions she put on her children, like telling them to stay away from certain people and places in the village, were in their best